Tag Archives: Judy Turner

A puppet Johnny Cash greets children before a private showing of “String City: Nashville’s Tradition of Music and Puppetry” last week at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum (photo: Dipti Vaidya / The Tennessean).

Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum Director and Chief Executive Officer Kyle Young considers himself in the employ of his board, which means he listens carefully when his board chairman, Steve Turner, presents an idea.

“Steve has an idea du jour,” Young says. “This guy is always thinking of things that will make this place better and the city better.”

On this particular jour, Turner was thinking about a way to present a history of Nashville country music in a way that spotlights the music’s transformational impact on the city.

Steve and Judy Turner, whose philanthropy has helped reinvigorate downtown Nashville, talk at their home on Second Avenue, which overlooks downtown. (Photo: John Partipilo/The Tennessean)

In cowboy boots and a non-cowboy suit, Steve Turner sits in his Second Avenue home and ponders.

“Every time somebody says, ‘This new stuff isn’t country music anymore,’ I wonder, ‘Do you think this is a static art form?’ ” he says. “It’s the common man’s music, and it changes with the times, and that’s why it’s so successful.”

Then Turner talks about the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education Coalition, the one called STEM, and how it ought to be called STEAM, to incorporate arts with the technical stuff.

“The value of being a human being — the best we do — is in the arts,” he says, pointing to a newspaper article about how music aids emotional recovery in tragedy’s aftermath.